Girl who filmed dying George Floyd sobs in court: ‘I couldn’t save you’

The 17-year-old girl who recorded the video showing the death of George Floyd says she saw ‘a man terrified, scared, begging for his life’.

Activists demonstrate outside court in Minneapolis. Picture: AFP

The 17-year-old girl who recorded the notorious video showing the death of George Floyd tearfully told the trial of the police officer accused of murder that she saw “a man terrified, scared, begging for his life”.

Darnella Frazier recalled the officer restraining Floyd with his knee on his neck. “It wasn’t right. He was suffering, he was in pain,” she said.

Ms Frazier’s emotional testimony ended with her crying as she explained how she would stay up at night apologising to Floyd, who died aged 46, for not being able to save him. Derek Chauvin, 45, who has since been dismissed by the police, is charged with second-­degree murder and manslaughter and third-degree murder in relation to the death that triggered ­violent protests across America.

Chauvin’s defence team argue he “did exactly what he had been trained to do over his 19-year career” and that Floyd died as a result of a heart attack brought on by drugs that he had taken combined with heart disease and high blood pressure. Ms Frazier, now 18, was the first witness on the scene on May 25 last year after taking her young cousin shopping. She told the court in Minneapolis that she had pulled out her phone instinctively to record the scene.

Asked by Jerry Blackwell, leading the prosecution, to describe the demeanour of Chauvin she said he seemed to apply more pressure to Floyd’s neck as bystanders gathered and began pleading for him to stop and take Floyd’s pulse.

“He just stared at us, he had this cold look, heartless,” said Ms Frazier, who could be seen by the jury but was not shown on the court video because she is considered a minor.

“It seemed as if he didn’t care what we were saying. It didn’t change what he was doing.” Ms Frazier said that one bystander, a firefighter, pleaded repeatedly with officers to check Floyd’s pulse but Chauvin and another officer, Tou Thao, put their hands on their cans of spray to ward people off. “They definitely put their hands on the Mace and we all pulled back,” she told the jury.

Eric Nelson, for the defence, said on the first day of witness testimony on Monday that Chauvin and his fellow officers found themselves in an increasingly hostile situation, which distracted them from Floyd’s suffering.

When Ms Frazier was asked by Mr Blackwell whether she saw signs of violence that day she replied: “Yes, from the cops. From Chauvin and from Officer Thao.”

Under cross-examination by the defence, she said it was a surprise that her video went viral after she posted it on social media. She was asked if it had changed her life. “It has,” she said.

Mr Blackwell asked her to elaborate on how her life had changed. She said: “When I look at George Floyd I look at my dad, my brothers, my cousins, my uncle because they are all black … it could have been one of them. It’s the nights I stayed up apologising to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically intervening and saving his life. It’s not what I should have done, it’s what he [Chauvin] should have done.”

The next witness, Ms Frazier’s nine-year-old cousin, said: “I saw the officer put a knee on the neck of George Floyd.”

Earlier Donald Williams, a former wrestler, who was also among the onlookers shouting at Chauvin to get off Floyd, testified that he called police on the four officers at the scene “because I believed I witnessed a murder”. Mr Williams said he watched Floyd “slowly fade away … like a fish in a bag”.

Prosecutors played back Mr Williams’s emergency call when he was heard yelling at the officers: “Y’all is murderers.”

The Times